After two months of hard work, the University of Rhode Island Student Senate has approved the archery club as a recognized student organization.
The club was first considered over the summer by Julia Duffy, a freshman biology major and new president of the club. Duffy created a group on Facebook in order to gauge the interest of other students before coming to campus.
“My first major challenge was trying to start college while seeing who would really be interested in the idea,” Duffy said. “I messaged everyone who liked the group on Facebook individually to ask if they were really interested in joining. Now we have a group chat and about 15 people who are seriously interested.”
Among the first people to respond to the idea of the club was Austin Shission, a junior microbiology major, and the club’s vice president.
“I jumped on the idea and messaged her right away,” Shission said. Shission, who spent eight months serving as the president of Phi Kappa Psi, was able to use his knowledge of procedure and regulations to help establish the club and guide Duffy in what needed to be done.
“Long term, we have a lot of work,” Shission said. “We really want to set up [an archery] range on campus so we won’t have to pay everytime we go to shoot.”
The current plans, according to Shission, are for the group to travel to a range in Warwick that costs $15 per person to shoot for an hour. Duffy joked, “it isn’t like we can just set up targets in the quad.”
After the club was approved, Duffy found several people surprised, who told her that the student senate doesn’t easily approve any weapon-based clubs.
“I think they liked us because we are both technically trained,” Duffy said. “I actually train people in archery. I love seeing people go from not being able to shoot to getting a bullseye.”
Duffy said she was employed by High Meadows Day Camp in North Granby, Connecticut. Shission said that he had also been certified in Archery, and although the certification has lapsed, he said that he intends to renew it.
Both Shission and Duffy agreed that the process to start the club was rather simple. The majority of the information and forms they needed were right on the URI website.
To start the club, Duffy started posting on Facebook, and once she saw that other students were on board, she and Shission got started. They then arranged their first meeting, elected officers and began the process of getting approval from the senate.
“You have to start with a subcommittee,” Shission said. “They ask what your purpose for the club is and make sure you’ve planned everything correctly. Once they ‘okayed’ us, we just had to stand before the senate.”
Two weeks after being approved by the committee, Duffy and Shission stood before the senate where their club was approved unanimously.
“I think being a certified trainer helped most,” Duffy said. “Knowing that we started the whole thing while thinking of safety really came across. Obviously safety is first, but I don’t want people to think it’s a high pressure environment. I want people to enjoy it and have fun.”
When asked about what they had planned for the club, both Shission and Duffy said how excited they were for next semester. Shission said that because there are only three weeks left until finals, there isn’t much they can do now, but he said they already have some ideas for next semester.
“Archery tag,” Duffy said in terms of her ideas.”It’s like paintball, but with bows. I call it the Hunger Games with safety. I’m hoping it will help us to raise funds to start getting equipment and such.”
“It’s basically like a Nerf war,” Shission said. “The arrows are all topped with this foam so they aren’t dangerous. The idea is to really get people interested in the sport while having fun and raising money for the club.”